MEPs debated again on Wednesday 15 March in Strasbourg how to prevent the deaths of dozens of migrants at sea trying to reach the EU and agreed on a common response.
MEPs returned to the story of the shipwreck of 68 people off the coast of Crotone, Calabria, at the end of February, and a large number of them called for both the rapid adoption of the ‘Migration and Asylum Pact’ and the development of a European rescue and recovery force at sea, as requested by the Renew Europe Group.
Other MEPs, notably from the EPP, insisted above all on the need to prevent these crossings and to fight against the smugglers.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, had earlier insisted on the Commission’s action against smugglers and the prevention of departures from third countries, including North Africa.
She will travel next week to Tunisia, from where departures have increased in 2022. “We need to do more against smugglers” and prevent migrants from getting on these boats.
Recalling that coordination on rescue at sea will be at the heart of the new ‘Integrated Border Management Strategy’, presented on 14 March (see EUROPE 13141/3), the Commissioner also called on Member States to approve more legal labour migration. “There will be a shortfall of two million people in the care sector”, she said, calling on co-legislators to agree quickly on the ‘single permit’ and ‘long-term resident’ Directives.
Resettlement of refugees to the EU, the humanitarian corridor system, will also be encouraged, with 50,000 places by 2025.
However, the Commissioner’s responses were met with mixed reactions, particularly from the Greens/EFA Group, which deplored the fact that the Commission’s solution relied in part on the Libyan coastguard. “You might as well say we’re sending people back to hell”, commented Dutchwoman Tineke Strik.
S&D Group leader Iratxe Garcia Perez (Spanish) attacked the EPP Group’s solutions. “The right prefers to discuss walls and wall financing”. We must “regain our dignity, walls are not a magic solution”.
Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld (Renew Europe) called on the EU Council to move forward on the ‘Migration and Asylum Pact’, but “this does not solve the problems of people who are now getting on boats and need to be helped with rescue capacities in the Member States”.
Earlier in the week, French MEP Sylvie Guillaume (S&D) deplored the EU’s “years of backsliding” and its withdrawal from search and rescue operations at sea, on the grounds that this was not within its remit. She also called for a return to a real European mechanism. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)